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The children's train : a novel / by Ardone, Viola,1974-author.; Botsford, Clarissa,translator.; translation of:Ardone, Viola,1974-Treno dei bambini.English.;
"Based on true events, a heartbreaking story of love, family, hope, and survival set in post-World War II Italy-written with the heart of Orphan Train and Before We Were Yours-about poor children from the south sent to live with families in the north to survive deprivation and the harsh winters. Though Mussolini and the fascists have been defeated, the war has devastated Italy, especially the south. Seven-year-old Amerigo lives with his mother Antonietta in Naples, surviving on odd jobs and his wits like the rest of the poor in his neighborhood. But one day, Amerigo learns that a train will take him away from the rubble-strewn streets of the city to spend the winter with a family in the north, where he will be safe and have warm clothes and food to eat. Together with thousands of other southern children, Amerigo will cross the entire peninsula to a new life. Through his curious, innocent eyes, we see a nation rising from the ashes of war, reborn. As he comes to enjoy his new surroundings and the possibilities for a better future, Amerigo will make the heartbreaking choice to leave his mother and become a member of his adoptive family. Amerigo's journey is a moving story of memory, indelible bonds, artistry, and self-exploration, and a soaring examination of what family can truly mean. Ultimately Amerigo comes to understand that sometimes we must give up everything, even a mother's love, to find our destiny"--
Subjects: Historical fiction.; Children; Families;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Eternal [sound recording] / by Scottoline, Lisa,author.; Campbell, Casssandra,narrator.; Ballerini, Edoardo,1970-narrator.; Penguin Audio (Firm),publisher.;
Read by Cassandra Campbell and Edoardo Ballerini ; author's note read by the author."Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Elisabetta is a feisty beauty who dreams of becoming a novelist; Marco the brash and athletic son in a family of professional cyclists; and Sandro a Jewish mathematics prodigy, kind-hearted and thoughtful, the son of a lawyer and a doctor. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart. But in the autumn of 1937, all of that begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy's Fascists with Hitler's Nazis and altering the very laws that govern Rome. In time, everything that the three hold dear--their families, their homes, and their connection to one another--is tested in ways they never could have imagined.As anti-Semitism takes legal root and World War II erupts, the threesome realizes that Mussolini was only the beginning. The Nazis invade Rome, and with their occupation come new atrocities against the city's Jews, culminating in a final, horrific betrayal. Against this backdrop, the intertwined fates of Elisabetta, Marco, Sandro, and their families will be decided, in a heartbreaking story of both the best and the worst that the world has to offer. Unfolding over decades, Eternal is a tale of loyalty and loss, family and food, love and war--all set in one of the world's most beautiful cities at its darkest moment. This moving novel will be forever etched in the hearts and minds of readers"--
Subjects: Audiobooks.; Historical fiction.; Jews; Triangles (Interpersonal relations);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The traitor among us / by Perry, Anne,author.;
"Elena Standish investigates the murder of a fellow MI6 agent near the country estate of one of England's most influential families in this gripping mystery from New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry. Not far from the sprawling grounds of Wyndham Hall, longtime MI6 agent John Repton's body is found with a bullet hole through the heart. The corpse's proximity to the estate sends ripples of concern through the intelligence community: Repton was killed while surveilling the members of a household with alleged ties to fascists--who threaten the security of the country as Hitler's control spreads across Europe. Elena Standish is assigned the case since she has a connection to the Wyndham family; Lady Wyndham's brother is courting Elena's older sister Margot. Elena secures an invitation to Wyndham Hall for herself and a "date,"--her colleague James Allenby. To covertly investigate Repton's murder, the pair must uncover the true loyalties of the people in the house while protecting Margot from her beau's potentially dangerous relatives. But Elena is torn, for her sister has finally found happiness after years of heartbreak and sorrow, and having to take down the Wyndhams would destroy her new relationship. As Elena and Allenby dig deeper into the Wyndham family's nefarious connections, Margot grows suspicious. Can Elena reconcile her political and professional obligations with her loyalty and love for her sister? Will Elena and Allenby get to the bottom of their colleague's murder? In The Traitor Among Us, Anne Perry raises the stakes--for Elena, MI6, and for Britain's future"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Historical fiction.; Spy fiction.; Novels.; Standish, Elena (Fictitious character); Great Britain. MI6; Murder; Sisters; Women spies; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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Death in focus / by Perry, Anne,author.;
"In the start of an all-new mystery series set in pre-World War II Europe, an intrepid young photographer carries her imperiled lover's final, urgent message into the heart of Berlin as Hitler ascends to power. On vacation from London on the beautiful Italian coast, twenty-eight-year-old Elena Standish and her older sister Margot have finally been able to forget some of the lasting trauma of the Great War. Touring with her camera in hand, Elena has found new inspiration in the striking Italian landscape, and she's met an equally striking man named Ian. Not ready to part from one another, she and Ian share a train trip home to England. But a shocking murder disrupts their agenda, forcing Elena to personally deliver a message to Berlin that could change the fate of Europe. Back home, Elena's diplomat father and secretive grandfather--the former head of MI6, unbeknownst to his family--are involved in their own international machinations. Working behind the scenes as Elena tries to complete her mission on the ground, they interfere with a crucial political rally for one of Germany's most outspoken fascists. With Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich on the rise, and Elena caught in the middle of an international incident, anyone she encounters might be part of a deadly plot. In the first novel of a riveting new series by bestselling author Anne Perry, family secrets merge with suspense on the world stage, and Elena learns that, in these complicated times, no one can be trusted, and she must learn to rely only on herself"--
Subjects: Detective and mystery fiction.; Historical fiction.; Women photographers; Murder;
Available copies: 2 / Total copies: 2
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The good German : a novel / by Bock, Dennis,1964-author.;
In November 1939, a German anti-fascist named Georg Elser came as close to assassinating Adolf Hitler as anyone ever had. In this gripping novel of alternate history, he doesn't just come close--he succeeds. But he could never have imagined the terrible consequences that would follow from this act of heroism. Hermann Göring, masterful political strategist, assumes the Chancellery and quickly signs a non-aggression treaty with the isolationist president Joseph Kennedy that will keep America out of the war that is about to engulf Europe. Göring rushes the German scientific community into developing the atomic bomb, and in August 1944, this devastating new weapon is tested on the English capital. London lies in ruins. The war is over, fascism prevails in Europe, and Canada, the Commonwealth holdout in the Americas, suffers on as a client state of the Soviet Union. Georg Elser, blinded in the A-bombing of London, is shipped to Canada and quarantined in a hospice near Toronto called Mercy House. Here we meet William Teufel, a German-Canadian boy who in the summer of 1960 devises a plan that he hopes will distance himself from his German heritage and, unwittingly, brings him face to face with the man whose astonishing act of heroism twenty-one years earlier set the world on its terrifying new path. In this page-turning narrative, Bock has created an utterly compelling and original novel of historical speculation in the vein of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, John Wyndham's The Chrysalids and Philip K. Dick's cult classic The Man in the High Castle.
Subjects: Dystopian fiction.; Alternative histories (Fiction); Historical fiction.; Göring, Hermann, 1893-1946; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The stone world : a novel / by Agee, Joel,author.;
"The son of acclaimed writer James Agee delivers a beautiful and haunting recreation of his childhood, when his mother fled America for Mexico, and raised him amid a circle including expat European communists, local labor activists, and even Frida Kahlo ... Joel Agee's hallucinatory first novel begins in a house with a large garden in an unnamed Mexican town in the late 1940s, where six-and-a-half-year-old Peter reads, dreams, and plays with his friends. He is a nascent explorer, artist, philosopher, mystic, and scientist. His world is still new, not yet papered over with received knowledge. And the actual world around him is a unique one in history: a community of leftist emigrés who have found refuge in Mexico from the Nazi and fascist regimes of Europe, rubbing shoulders with Mexican labor activists and leftists such as Frida Kahlo. But the emigrés long for home - including Peter's step-father, who wants to return to his native Germany. Going back to Europe may not be safe for any of them yet, however, which gives rise to anguished arguments among Peter's parents and their tight group of friends. And slowly, Peter begins to comprehend that his world may be turned upside down - that he might be forced to take leave of everyone he knows: his best friend, Arón; his father's friend Sándor, who talks about revolution and performs magic tricks; and Zita, the family's live-in-maid, who has taught him the consoling mysteries of prayer. Steeped in the magic and myths of childhood - yet haunted by a harsh adult world bedeviled by instability and political turmoil - Joel Agee's The Stone World is an unforgettable portrait of a family that will inevitably invite comparison with another classic family story, that of his father James Agee's A Death in the Family"--
Subjects: Biographical fiction.; Domestic fiction.; Historical fiction.; Families; Refugees; Refugees;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The labyrinth of the spirits : a novel / by Ruiz Zafón, Carlos,1964-author.; translation of:Ruiz Zafón, Carlos,1964-Laberinto de los espíritus.English.; Graves, Lucia,translator.;
"In this unforgettable final volume of Ruiz Zafón's cycle of novels set in the universe of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, beautiful and enigmatic Alicia Gris, with the help of the Sempere family, uncovers one of the most shocking conspiracies in all Spanish history. Nine-year-old Alicia lost her parents during the Spanish Civil War when the Nacionales (the fascists) savagely bombed Barcelona in 1938. Twenty years later, she still carries the emotional and physical scars of that violent and terrifying time. Weary of her work as an investigator for Spain's secret police in Madrid, a job she has held for more than a decade, the twenty-nine-year old plans to move on. At the insistence of her boss, Leandro Montalvo, she remains to solve one last case: the mysterious disappearance of Spain's Minister of Culture, Mauricio Valls. With her partner, the intimidating policeman Juan Manuel Vargas, Alicia discovers a possible clue--a rare book by the author Victor Mataix hidden in Valls' office in his Madrid mansion. Valls was the director of the notorious Montjuic Prison in Barcelona during World War II where several writers were imprisoned, including David Martín and Victor Mataix. Traveling to Barcelona on the trail of these writers, Alicia and Vargas meet with several booksellers, including Juan Sempere, who knew her parents. As Alicia and Vargas come closer to finding Valls, they uncover a tangled web of kidnappings and murders tied to the Franco regime, whose corruption is more widespread and horrifying than anyone imagined. Alicia's courageous and uncompromising search for the truth puts her life in peril. Only with the help of a circle of devoted friends will she emerge from the dark labyrinths of Barcelona and its history into the light of the future."--Amazon.com.
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Antiquarian booksellers; Family secrets; Conspiracies; Missing persons; Police;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The wife's tale : a personal history / by Aida Edemariam,author.;
"One remarkable woman--caught in the tumult of an extraordinary century in Ethiopia's history. Told by her granddaughter, Canadian journalist Aida Edemariam, Yetemegnu's story is of courage, struggle and survival. The wife's tale has the sweep and lyrical power that captivated readers of Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone, and of Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family. Born in the northern Ethiopian city of Gondar in about 1916, and a child bride at eight years old, Aida Edemariam's grandmother once stood, shaking, as fascists searched her home for guns she knew were there; in the late 1930s and early 1940s she fled both Italian and Allied bombardment. When her husband was imprisoned, in the 1950s, Yetemegnu--a woman who had hardly left her own compound for three decades--managed to gain audiences with Emperor Haile Selassie I in Addis Ababa, to argue for justice, for revenge, and for the futures of her seven children. Widowed, she fought for thirteen years through courts unaccustomed to a woman determined to defend her assets. A feudal landlord herself, she felt the first tremors of the coming revolution, then, in the early 1970s, watched it burst into flower: night after night she listened, praying desperately, to the firing squads of the Red Terror doing their work next door, and endured yet more soldiers tramping through her home. In her sixties she learned to read, and eventually made a longed-for pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Told from Yetemegnu's own point of view, The wife's tale features a rich cast of characters--emperors and empresses, archbishops and slaves, priests and scholars, monks and nuns, Marxist revolutionaries and wartime double agents. But above all, there is Yetemegnu herself, grand and haughty and sometimes difficult but also vulnerable and incredibly generous and who, despite everything--the toil, the deaths, the cruelties and the many, many tears--retains an infectious sense of mischief and joy."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Yetemegnu Mekonnen.; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The good allies : how Canada and the United States fought together to defeat fascism during the Second World War / by Cook, Tim,1971-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From our country's most important war historian, a gripping account of the turbulent relationship between Canada and the US during the Second World War. The two nations entered the war amidst rivalry and mutual suspicion, but learned to fight together before emerging triumphant and bound by an alliance that has lasted to this day. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, it set in motion a deadly struggle between the Axis powers and the Allies, but also fraught negotiations between and among the allies. On questions of diplomacy, economic policy, industrial might, military capabilities, and even national sovereignty, thousands of lives and the fate of the free world depended on back-room deals and desperate trade-offs between soldiers, diplomats, and leaders. In North America, Canada and the US strained to forge a new military alliance to guard their coasts and fend off German U-boats and the menace of a Japanese invasion. Wartime economies were entwined to produce a staggering contribution of weapons to keep Britain and other allies in the war. The defence of North America against enemy threats was essential before the US and Canada could send armies, navies, and air forces overseas. In his trademark style, Tim Cook employs eyewitness accounts to vividly lay bare the brutality of combat and the courage of North Americans under fire. Behind the fighting fronts, the charged and often secret communications between national leaders, Churchill, Roosevelt, and King, reveals how their personalities shaped the outcome of history's most destructive war, the fate of the British Empire, and the North American alliance that lives on to this day. The Good Allies is a masterful account of how Canadians and Americans made the transition from wary rivals to steadfast allies, and how Canada thrived in the shadow of the military and global superpower. In exploring this complex and crucial dimension of the Second World War and its legacy, Cook recounts two nations' story of cooperation, sacrifice, and of bleeding together to save the world from the fascist threat"--
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945; World War, 1939-1945;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dare to speak : defending free speech for all / by Nossel, Suzanne,1969-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A vital, necessary playbook for navigating and defending free speech today by the CEO of PEN America, Dare To Speak provides a pathway for promoting free expression while also cultivating a more inclusive public culture. Online trolls and fascist chat groups. Controversies over campus lectures. Cancel culture versus censorship. The daily hazards and debates surrounding free speech dominate headlines and fuel social media storms. In an era where one tweet can launch-or end-your career, and where free speech is often invoked as a principle but rarely understood, learning to maneuver the fast-changing, treacherous landscape of public discourse has never been more urgent. In Dare To Speak, Suzanne Nossel, a leading voice in support of free expression, delivers a vital, necessary guide to maintaining democratic debate that is open, free-wheeling but at the same time respectful of the rich diversity of backgrounds and opinions in a changing country. Centered on practical principles, Nossel's primer equips readers with the tools needed to speak one's mind in today's diverse, digitized, and highly-divided society without resorting to curbs on free expression. At a time when free speech is often pitted against other progressive axioms-namely diversity and equality-Dare To Speak presents a clear-eyed argument that the drive to create a more inclusive society need not, and must not, compromise robust protections for free speech. Nossel provides concrete guidance on how to reconcile these two sets of core values within universities, on social media, and in daily life. She advises readers how to: Use language conscientiously without self-censoring ideas; Defend the right to express unpopular views; And protest without silencing speech. Nossel warns against the increasingly fashionable embrace of expanded government and corporate controls over speech, warning that such strictures can reinforce the marginalization of lesser-heard voices. She argues that creating an open market of ideas demands aggressive steps to remedy exclusion and ensure equal participation. Replete with insightful arguments, colorful examples, and salient advice, Dare To Speak brings much-needed clarity and guidance to this pressing-and often misunderstood-debate"--
Subjects: Freedom of speech.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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